Houston’s Bush and Hobby airports poised to set air cargo tonnage records in 2024 with greater growth projected next year.
Airport designers worldwide looking to create the ideal air cargo logistics facility for shippers, airlines, freight forwarders and ground handlers should book a flight to Houston and take notes.
America’s fourth largest city is a prime example of expert planning and continual investment in its two main airports—giant George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and smaller William P. Hobby Airport (HOU)—which are poised to set air cargo tonnage records for 2024 and likely to break them next year.
And as this is written, the City of Houston’s aviation department, Houston Airports, is working to “expand our cargo facilities and add a new road to the existing major thoroughfares serving Bush so (pick-up and delivery) truckers do not necessarily experience congestion and delays in the cargo area” that plague some big city airports, Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for Houston Airports, told the American Journal of Transportation (AJOT) in an exclusive interview.
Geographical Advantages
Houston’s two airports have geographical advantages that few cities can match. IAH is a busy gateway to Latin and South America, serving shippers and importers of diverse commodities, ranging from auto parts to fruits, flowers and fish. The airports are also situated in the epicenter of the oil, gas, alternative energy, aerospace and advanced manufacturing industries with plenty of lift to handle air imports and exports of large construction equipment.
As Szczesniak puts it, “Houston, Texas, USA is the world’s leading oil and gas hub and is the number one US export market with $237.7 billion in exports including all modes of transportation. Handling over 534,000 metric tons last year, it had the third highest air cargo trade growth in 2023 among the top 20 US international cargo airports and posted a 19 percent gain in total dollar cargo value last year.
Interestingly, passenger airlines operating at IAH fly routes connecting the U.S., and therefore air cargo shippers to Europe (Air France, British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines, American Air, Delta Air, United Airlines), the Middle East (Qatar Airways, Emirates), Asia/Pacific (All Nippon Airways, EVA Air, Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines), Canada (Air Canada) and Latin America (Aeroméxico, Avianca, Volaris, and Volaris El Salvador). Plus, other smaller U.S. domestic airlines, such as Alaska Air, have flights beyond America’s borders.
Factor in airline partnerships, codeshares and other alliances, passenger airlines alone at IAH can team up to move cargo to 195 destinations on five continents.
Ground Zero for Integrators
Yet what gives IAH real clout among global air freight shippers, forwarders and 3PLs is its 30 mostly widebody and jumbo all-cargo jets that blanket the globe with scheduled and ad-hoc charter flights, the latter catering mostly to the energy industry.
Anchored by the integrators—Fed Ex, DHL Express and UPS—it includes Cargolux, Emirates Sky Cargo, Cargojet, Air Transport Services Group, Atlas Air, Challenge Air, Cathay Cargo, Lufthansa Cargo, Qatar Airways Cargo, Silk Way West Airlines, Turkish Cargo, Air Atlanta Icelandic, Ameriflight, Berry Aviation, Cavok Air, IFL Group, Kalitta Charters, LATAM Cargo, Lynden Air Cargo, MNG Airlines, National Airlines, Polar Air Cargo, SkyLease Cargo and Ukraine Air Alliance.
Atlas Air, Inc. has a strong and expanding presence at IAH. It operates scheduled flights under a contract with Amazon, and its jets sport Amazon’s Prime Air name and colors. E-commerce volume in and out of the market—and IAH—is surging, and the huge volume of small packages is responsible for the only truck pickup and delivery truck congestion at the airport, Szczesniak allows.
What is triggering the e-commerce demand here? “Houston is a growing market,” he says, “We had an estimated 140,000 people moving into the Houston region last year.”
At the same time, air freighting of oversized cargo through IAH is also on the upswing. “Houston is the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area for manufacturing, by GDP,” he points out. “And as the heart of the oil industry, a lot of big high-value stuff gets made here and then it moves as project air cargo.”
Economic Diversification
But the local economy is diversifying in ways that benefit Houston’s airports. “The future of Texas is not just energy. Houston is home to the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical center in the entire world,” Szczesniak explains. “Right next door, they are building out Helix Park, a 37-acre multibillion-dollar life sciences hub which is forecasted to inject more than $5 billion annually into the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs.” When completed, locals claim, the entire venture will be driven by “collaboration” between hospitals, universities and businesses.
It should also be a boon to IAH’s air cargo community since medicine lives on the immediate availability of expensive, high-value, time-sensitive products and equipment. “We anticipate there will be a significant increase in the IAH and HOU. Truckers will also reap new premium-priced traffic. “Houston is centrally located on I-10, the major thoroughfare that links Los Angeles and the East Coast,” he adds.
Houston’s airports are aiming to boost its already strong perishables traffic, Szczesniak tells the AJOT. “We have a world class fumigation facility on the airport that happens to be right next to our air cargo facility with U.S. agricultural department officers, which makes it a one-stop building for perishables shippers and consignees.”
He says that only half of that 62,000-square-foot building is devoted to perishables, and the other half is used for general air cargo, but that is about to change. IAH is exploring an expansion of the perishable facility storage and handling center with its tenants in anticipation of potential volume growth of fruits, vegetables and fish, including salmon, and flower imports from South America, plus commodities from Mexico.
As this is written, Houston Airports, which contributes $40 billion annually to the region’s economy, does not have deep penetration in Japan. While All-Nippon Airways and United Airlines can transport belly freight to Tokyo’s Narita, there is no direct scheduled freighter service. Still, the country will get more belly cargo lift in March 2025 when Zipair, a low-cost, transpacific carrier launches Boeing 787-8 passenger flights from IAH to Tokyo Narita.
IAH, which covers 11,000 acres, has no shortage of space for new on-airport cargo facilities. Amazon, for example, has an on-tarmac handling and storage building with nearby ramp access and has three other distribution centers several miles away to accommodate its booming e-commerce traffic. “Within a five-mile radius of Bush Airport, we have 11 new warehouse parks with more than six million square feet of available space under the roof,” says the aviation director. Additionally, there is room to park 20 widebody jets on the tarmac. But even with existing cargo buildings, occupancies are high and, in some cases, maxed out.
Longer Runways
Meanwhile, Houston Airports is exploring lengthening IAH’s departure runways, adding more airplane parking spots and creating new on-airport cargo warehousing facilities to accommodate growth.
“We are in our planning phase now to expand our cargo operations, and we will survey the market and see what the demand looks like,” Szczesniak told AJOT. “A lot of airports do not have the land or the labor to expand. With a heavy influx of people moving into Houston and with our airport acreage, we have both.”
If IAH can maintain its recent cargo traffic growth, it will have the capacity to absorb it. As an example, passenger terminals are being upgraded and expanded and regional jets will be replaced by larger aircraft with more belly lift, he predicts. That’s not even taking into consideration the possibility of additional freighters adding IAH to their regular schedules or signing up for charters.
Says Szczesniak: “We have a mayor who is very supportive of the airport system because last year we moved nearly $17 billion worth of cargo through Houston. The airport is important to the business community and the business community is important to the airport.”
